3D Lighting and a New Item

Hey. So, progress continues on Soldier Of. Recently, I added 3D lighting, and a new item, the flashlight.
The reason that I updated the lighting is because I needed the flashlight beam to be able to go behind obstacles. Previously, lights were in front of all objects - now, they are fully three dimensional. Some of the lights were also flat planes before, but now they're all three-dimensional as well.

The solution to the problem that I went with lacked a bit of finesse. I ended up basically duplicating all solid objects and coloring them black for the lighting pass camera. It works well, though, and the Rasterizer doesn't seem to be complaining (too much).

Anyway, the flashlight should be a nice tool to help you navigate the darker maps. The further in you go, the darker maps will tend to get, as well, which makes it a very useful item to own. I might add an energy bar to it, so that you can't just walk around with it constantly. That might make it a chore to be underground, though, so maybe I'll just leave it the way it is. Here's a quick video showing the lighting system as it currently is.



I've been working on Soldier Of less than necessary recently as I've been working on other projects (non-game projects), like a new particle system for BGE games, and BlendSling (a launcher for BGE games). Both are coming along, and BlendSling's feeling really slick with the recent bugfixes that were committed to Blender. I'll probably try distributing Soldier Of with it, just to see how it works for everyone.

I'm planning to change the name from Soldier Of - it doesn't really describe the game well enough and sounds generic. It also has "Soldier" in the name, even though there is no soldiers in the game, hah. Anyway, I'll mull it over some more.

Anyway, thanks a lot for reading and watching. Have fun!